


Clara's Destiny

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Destiny, F/M, Fixed Points in Time, Friendship, Romance, Some angst, Spoilers for Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Twelve/Clara reunion scenario, continuity cavalcade, lost opportunities, memory wipes, series 9 and 10 gap fill, spoilers for class episode 1: for tonight we might die, spoilers for episode: the husbands of river song, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 15:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13034451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: All it took was seeing her name on Coal Hill Academy's memorial wall for the Twelfth Doctor's memory block of Clara to come undone, and with it all the feelings that had driven him to challenge Time itself. Now, he finds himself on a nameless world hoping to find Clara so that they can be together forever. Things don't quite go as planned...





	1. Memories, Pressed Between the Pages of My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set between the events of "For Tonight We Might Die" (the first episode of Class) and an event that occurs in Series 10; exactly what that event is will become clear during the story. In this story, the Class episode takes place some time after The Husbands of River Song, which in turn takes place some years after the events of Hell Bent. The story unfolds over 6 chapters. Not bad for a story that was originally planned as a 500-word drabble until the characters decided they had more of a story to tell.
> 
> My profound thanks to [Universe on Her Shoulders](http://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders) for her great beta reading of this story. She helped make this a much better piece. 
> 
> This will likely be my final story to be posted before the final Peter Capaldi episode airs, and it may be a little while before I write another (though I have ideas). But I hope to continue writing stories about Twelve and Clara, as long as there is still interest in a clever boy and an impossible girl.
> 
> Edit: For any prospective readers who may be concerned about content, I chose not to put in a content warning to protect a plot spoiler. However this story (like 99% of my stories) is family friendly.

The Doctor wasn’t prone to calling people beautiful. It wasn’t his style and, to be frank, he usually found it too sentimental for his liking.

But, as he observed his former companion, Clara Oswald, handing out food parcels to mothers, fathers and children in front of a weathered old building on an Earth colony planet no one had bothered to give a proper name to, he freely admitted to himself that she was beautiful.

Of course, being a Time Lord, such superficial considerations were, well, superficial. He once told Clara, during a shared dream state in which she appeared to have aged into antiquity, that she looked no different to him as a tired, elderly woman approaching her end days than she did as an energetic, vibrant woman who was (chronologically, at any rate) in her late twenties. He had meant it in the best possible way, of course. Especially since her eyes had never changed.

_Those eyes…_

From his location standing partially hidden by a pillar, at a far-enough distance that a regular human would require field glasses to see her features, the Doctor watched as Clara stroked the cheek of one little girl who seemed to be sobbing before smiling in comfort at the woman’s touch. Clara responded with a brilliant, dimpled smile of her own, her eyes dancing.

 _Yes,_ the Doctor thought, _Clara Oswald is beautiful._

***

For the Doctor, it had been more than twenty-five years since he was forced to say goodbye to Clara as he lay on the cold floor of a stolen TARDIS with a hastily reprogrammed neuroblock device rewriting his synapses. 

There had been a momentary lapse in judgement on her part, and a loss of focus on his. And the end result was Clara’s execution in a hidden alien refugee colony in London in the late 2010s. A phantom raven.

A scream. Black smoke. An empty shell. Empty hearts.

That should have been the end. Just as it had been for Adric. For Lucie. For Astrid. For Sara. For Katarina. For River.

The Doctor didn’t have time to grieve for Clara properly, being transported into his own confession dial by the Time Lords only a few moments after she’d collapsed into nothingness in front of his helpless eyes. The dial was a simple puzzle that took him only a couple of weeks, subjectively speaking, to solve. He could have told them what they wanted to know, gone back to Gallifrey, punched a few people in the nose, and then gone back to Earth and had a good cry over Clara’s gravestone before sucking it up and moving on like he always did. Like he always knew he had to.

Companions die and the Doctor had long ago realised that happy endings were for other people, not for him. And so that’s how Clara’s story should have ended.

But not this time. Not with Clara. No, not _her_. Unacceptable. 

Instead of giving up, the Doctor openly challenged the Time Lords—and, indeed, Time itself—in an effort to actually undo Clara’s death. What could have been a simple two-week challenge in the confession dial became a long game played out over billions of years and billions of lives; his own. And during that time only one individual in all of creation kept him going, kept him (mostly) sane. Clara. She’d been there to comfort him when despair overtook him; not the real Clara, of course, but to the Doctor her memory had been real enough. And, when he envisioned her stroking his cheek—as she did every time he reached the end of his willpower, the end of his rope—he could feel the softness of her palm against his rough skin; soothing, even as she gave him a mental kick up the arse at the same time. The combination kept him fighting. Kept him punching. Again. And again. And again. Until one day he punched once too often at the diamond wall that blocked his way out of the confession dial. It finally collapsed, and he was free.

Free to take over Gallifrey. Exile the insane warmonger Rassilon. Get access to an extraction chamber—a facility that only the Lord President of the High Council had the authority to use. Get Clara away from Trap Street. Away from the raven. And then run.

Just the same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara Oswald. Together again. Forever. Time be damned.

Ultimately, the Doctor’s plan both failed and succeeded. His interference in Clara’s time stream bestowed upon her a form of near-immortality. She would live virtually forever…as long as she stayed away from Trap Street, Time would not allow her to be harmed. Yes, they could be together forever. She could even outlive him, because he freely admitted to himself that he was too much of a coward to want to live long enough to see her die again. 

It was perfect. Too perfect.

Which is why the Doctor knew that he had to give Clara up. She had to forget him. To live her life forever free of Time Lords, Trap Street, danger. Him.

If only he’d thought to ask Clara. The cost of his hubris had been dear. It wasn’t her memories that were blocked. The neuroblock—a device the size of a small mobile phone with the terrible ability to rewrite the brain that he’d taken from the Citadel for the purpose—was reprogrammed by Clara to backfire and block _his_ memories instead. 

Clara had done it in self-defence, in desperation. No malice. Never that. But the Doctor quickly realised she’d only half-completed the job. It would have blocked _both_ of their memories; the Doctor quietly finished the reprogramming with his back turned towards her. 

Clara was right, of course. She was always right. He had no business blocking her memory without her consent. So instead he offered a fifty-fifty chance: they’d push the button together. It could be her, it could be him. Of course the deck was always stacked in her favour; the Doctor made sure of that. 

Clara would live on, and the Doctor trusted in her wisdom to some day return to Trap Street. But not for a while. And the Doctor? Well, he’d continue on, find a new companion, dismiss the holes in his memory as the price paid for going beyond Rassilon’s regeneration limitation. Business as usual.

At least, that had been the plan.

Until the Doctor found himself sitting opposite Clara in a diner in a remote corner of the Nevada desert. He’d been summoned there by a mysterious message and, owing to the TARDIS having gone missing from London, the Doctor had been forced to hitchhike to the diner. 

There was Clara Oswald, disguised as a diner waitress, trying to do everything in her power to make the Doctor remember her, but failing. Even though he’d been able to provide her with a detailed recollection of his final hours with her on Gallifrey, he just couldn’t connect the face, or the voice, or the laugh. It wasn’t until Clara dematerialized her disguised TARDIS—revealing the Doctor’s own timeship waiting for him—that it finally dawned on him that they’d been reunited. 

In the years that followed, the Doctor managed to slowly, gradually piece together most of his history with Clara. Well, almost everything. The facts themselves lined up in a row quite quickly and neatly. There was a mummy on the _Orient Express_ in space. An Ice Warrior on a submarine. He knew about these and more than thirty others even before being summoned to the diner. Thank _you_ , UNIT Black Archive. In the absence of his TARDIS, he’d managed to fill many holes in his memories from within that secret facility, even though the more detailed information about Clara had been suspiciously erased. There were also blanks where photos of her had once been on a bulletin board that tracked his travelling associates. 

One of the Osgoods claimed the lost data was due to hard drive corruption; the other Osgood, strangely, couldn’t look him in the eye. Or, at least, she couldn’t after indicating that she’d never heard of Clara Oswald. Was she a new companion? There’s room on the bulletin board, see?

After his TARDIS was returned to him, the Doctor investigated Clara further. He was reminded that she was there on the day three of his incarnations came together intending to destroy Gallifrey and end the Time War—and he knew she deserved the credit for inspiring them to find another option. He already knew she was responsible for convincing the Time Lords to give him another regeneration (possibly his last, but he couldn’t be certain) after he’d used up his allotted thirteen. He’d actually discovered this last fact after deposing Rassilon, whose recent regenerations had rendered him insane, and the revelation on Gallifrey had made him even more determined to save Clara, no matter the cost. Exiling Rassilon at the end of time was just a bonus.

Yes, he knew, even with his memories a mixture of blocked and Swiss-cheesed, that Clara Oswald was a special companion, perhaps unique among the many the man had travelled with during his long lives. And that was saying something. 

Oddly, the one thing he could not do was find a clear image of the woman. Not that they didn’t exist—all he had to do was google “Clara Oswald” and images of her from her school’s website and dozens of students’ Facebook and Instagram accounts popped up; UNIT’s corner of the dark web had even more images of her, despite Osgood’s denial and the attempt by somebody to wipe Clara from the records. 

But here’s the maddening part: he couldn’t focus on her features. Even though he’d been sitting within kissing distance of her at the diner for hours and had seen a portrait of her painted (probably by Rigsy) on the door of his TARDIS briefly after it had been returned to him, the neuroblock continued to do its job. She was there, and yet she was not there. 

As time went on, the Doctor become more intrigued by Clara. The more he (re)learned, the more his fondness for her grew anew. 

But the Doctor’s life is nothing but one of change. He moved on, as he did, eventually even reuniting with his fourth wife, River Song, and spending a final 24-year-long evening with her before sending her off to her own fate at the largest library in the universe—a latent lesson taken from the futility of trying to undo Clara’s death, no doubt, though this fact didn’t occur to him till long after. He and River often spoke about Clara during their time, the Doctor expressing his frustrations about losing memories of a friend, with River occasionally joking about the Doctor and The Other Woman. 

“Don’t be daft,” he once told her. “We were just friends. No more.”

With a smile, River—who had married several other individuals while also married to the Doctor, thus absolving her of responsibility in taking the moral high ground with regards to monogamy—had responded with a single two-syllable word: “Bullshit.”

One week after saying goodbye to River for the last time on Darillium, the Doctor found himself back at Coal Hill Academy in London in the late 2010s. Desperate for distraction, he’d gotten involved with helping a group of students there, along with a fugitive alien prince and his protector, who had been roped into yet another ridiculous war. The protector and the prince were known to the Doctor; before he’d lost Clara, he’d helped them out of a jam and got them settled on Earth. He hadn’t even really paid attention to the school he’d left them at. It looked new and shiny. 

Of course, it just had to be _that_ school.

So the day had (sort of) been saved, with the students, the prince, the protector, and the Doctor battling off an incursion by an alien race. One of the kids lost a leg in the process, but the Doctor soon had that sorted and was giving one of his inspiring monologues as he prepared to make his exit. That’s when he eyes fell upon a plaque honouring deceased Coal Hill staff and students.

     **Oswald C.**

A new, intense memory hit him like a slap in the face. 

How could he have forgotten? How could he have been allowed to forget? 

_Oh, my Clara…my Clara…_

He’d barely kept himself together long enough to finish his speech, make his farewells and get the hell out of there. The alien protector, who posed as a teacher named Quill, knew something was off-kilter with the Doctor, but he was out of there before she had time to press him.

He’d slammed the TARDIS door behind him and had actually dropped to his knees by the console as an emotion continued to break through the neuroblock like water pouring through a hole in a dam. And, just like a compromised dam, it didn’t take long for the neuroblock to ultimately collapse like so much broken concrete.

Everything came back. Her voice. Her laugh. 

_Her eyes…_

The Doctor hadn’t been “fond” of Clara Oswald. 

He hadn’t been just a friend of Clara Oswald.

The Doctor now remembered, beyond all doubt: _he had been in love with Clara Oswald._

It was a feeling the Doctor felt rarely in his life. He couldn’t afford to feel that way as a near-immortal, and Time Lords were supposed to rise above that level of emotion anyway. Certainly there were flirtations and even the occasional brief romance (ah, Reinette, so sad…), but there were only a handful of people with whom he could honestly say he was _in love_. 

Rose Tyler. 

Romana. 

River Song. 

Jo Grant.

His first two wives.

Clara.

Why was her name appearing on a memorial board the trigger? Why it and not the smell of Clara’s perfume that lingered on the blouse he found in her former room aboard the TARDIS? Why it and not the fact he actually had visual evidence that he and Clara were, at one point, intimate? (Well, it was just a photograph of the two kissing while standing under mistletoe at a UNIT Christmas party; Clara’s face had been a blur to him, of course, but the Doctor’s blush and flustered expression suggested a lip-lock was in process. He had dismissed it as “heat of the moment” or a dare and had filed it away.) Why it and not the notebook Clara had filled with notes and drawings, apparently intended for whoever became the Doctor’s next travelling companion, and in which the Doctor at one point had surreptitiously inserted a note that was effectively a love letter? Or the page in his 2,000 Year Diary that he’d originally dismissed as simple penmanship practice, but which consisted of the name “Clara Smith” written over and over?

The Doctor spent the next three days after leaving Coal Hill sleepless, not even thinking of anything else, scouring every photo of Clara he could find. _Because he could see her face again._ He saw in a new light a photo of the two holding hands that he’d dismissed earlier; Clara, her elfin features now visible to him in sharp focus, looking up at him in such a way that made the Doctor feel lonelier than ever. The mistletoe photo … yes, it was Clara, her eyes closed and her arms wrapped tightly around the Doctor.

The Doctor’s memories of their encounter in the diner came back in a flood. If only he’d seen her then. “If I saw her again, I’d absolutely know.” He’d said that _to her face_. He hadn’t seen her. Not at all. At the time, he’d noticed her eyes tear up but, like an idiot, just dismissed it as a side effect of the lemonade they’d shared or the dry Nevada weather. She’d been crying. She wasn’t even supposed to be able to do that anymore. But then again, she was the Impossible Girl.

 _His_ Impossible Girl.

He had to get Clara back. Have her by his side again. Forever. 

_And if anyone has a problem with that—TO HELL WITH YOU!_

The fact that this feeling was exactly why he had to block his memories of her entered his mind. But the pain overrode any sane consideration. He’d already lost River to Time—River _had_ to die in The Library in front of his tenth self. He didn’t have to leave Rose behind on Pete’s World, but his clone needed someone to control him and, anyway, at that point in his lives he couldn’t have given Rose what she needed and it would have been unfair to saddle her with a regenerating Time Lord who could, at any time, quite literally end up not being the man she fell in love with. 

Clara was different. Yes, she still had to die on Trap Street, eventually. He knew that. He didn’t like it, but he knew that. Yet she was immortal; Trap Street could wait another billion years. A trillion years.

And, who knows, maybe there might even be a way to save her; a multiverse did exist, after all. Maybe the key to Clara’s survival was to simply leave this universe. Or what about the Time Lord technology that allowed the Doctor to keep rebooting himself in the Confession Dial once every ten days for four and a half billion years? 

_He would find a way to save Clara. He was the Doctor and winning is what he was best at. He just needed time._

He just needed to find her first.


	2. Sweetened Through the Ages Just Like Wine

In the years after the Time War, while living under the mistaken impression that he had destroyed his own people, the Doctor continually hoped and prayed that he’d someday find another Time Lord not named The Master. To help him do this, the Doctor had programmed his TARDIS to detect the presence of other Gallifreyan time ships and track them; or, at least, TARDISes that were not in the pre-Time War timeline.

Technically, he could have tracked down any number of Time Lords or others related to Gallifrey who were spread through time and space: Iris, Romana, Drax, Amy the Tracer and her sister, Zara—even his granddaughter. Technically, they were all out there. But to contact them risked them learning about the outcome of the Time War (or even the very existence of the conflagration) which would blow a hole in reality a lot bigger than the one that erupted that one time he’d left the safeties off the TARDIS and found himself sharing unexpected quality time with one of his earlier selves. 

So the program could only track Time Lords who existed _after_ the Time War. The entire time the program ran, it found nothing. The Doctor eventually turned it off because it had become too depressing and Donna said she didn’t need that sort of drama in the TARDIS.

That had been millennia ago, by his reckoning. Aeons, actually, but what’s a few billion years among Time Lords? 

The Doctor pulled the device out of storage, replaced the AA batteries (the universe’s most perfect power source), and plugged it into the console. He almost immediately got two hits. One was Missy ( _OK, I’ll ignore her for now,_ he had thought; _worry about how she got hold of a TARDIS on Skaro later_ ). And the other was Clara, her TARDIS shining in the vortex like a lighthouse on a shore. The fact he found Clara so quickly made him pray to whatever deity owed him a fiver that the High Council hadn’t devised their own version of the tracker yet. Or, if they had, they’d gone after Missy first.

Clara and Ashildr’s movements through time and space were plotted on the screen like a cat’s cradle, and the Doctor felt guilty at what was, let’s face it, a cosmic invasion of privacy. It was none of his business where she’d been, what she had done. She no doubt had been amazing—or, at least, knew the game well enough not to make too many ripples.

But he had been surprised, and a little concerned, at how _few_ vortex movements there actually were. He’d expected the tracker to show movements over _hundreds_ of years, willing the screen like a fractal pattern on steroids … and yet, after the first _five_ years, only five, the movements suddenly ended.

The tracker showed four trips to Earth in the late 2010s in fast succession following the other TARDIS’ departure from Gallifrey at the end of time. It didn’t take much for the Doctor to figure out what they were.

One trip to drop him off in the American desert after the neuroblock (surely an unintentional destination—Clara was probably still getting the hang of the controls; she’d aimed at London and missed). Then there were two to London proper around the same relative time to retrieve his TARDIS, presumably; however, again Clara missed as the first arrival was about a month prior to Trap Street, and then a second arrival about a week after. Clara was clearly gaining confidence in piloting her TARDIS. Finally, Nevada again a few weeks after that—enough time for the Doctor to contact UNIT in London, determine the TARDIS was missing, and then receive the mysterious message at the UNIT safe house in New Orleans where he’d made a temporary home. 

The Doctor had hoped that, if he stayed in the general vicinity of where he’d been deposited, he might get a clue. His patience was rewarded when he’d received the co-ordinates leading back to Nevada and the diner. A diner run by a young woman who was so earnest and open, he found himself describing his recent visit to Gallifrey, nearly unable to stop himself from opening up to someone he thought was a stranger. Now he knew why, of course. 

After those visits to the 2010s, there were only two more Earth visits caught by the tracker. Blackpool, 23 November 1986. The day Clara was born. And London, again, in the late 1890s. Vastra, Jenny and Strax, of course. 

There were no more visits to Earth, past, present nor future.

The Doctor knew some of the worlds Clara visited, but was impressed to see the names of several he’d never heard of before—Clara was breaking new ground. But then the trail ended at the planet with no proper name. Even on the tracker, it only came up as “Earth colony, 65th century.”

The Doctor had actually started to panic; had he remembered her too late? It was a feeling he hated and had only felt a handful of times before. He took a deep breath, willed his hearts to beat slower, and calmed himself. No, it didn’t mean the Time Lords had found her and sent her back to Trap Street. There was bound to be another reason. 

But was she imprisoned? Was she trapped somewhere? Jack Harkness once told him how he was buried alive for more than two thousand years and needed therapy for six months after he’d emerged from the confinement. The Doctor himself recalled spending a week trapped in a collapsed cave during his third incarnation after an ill-advised spot of spelunking until the Brigadier found him. He’d nearly lost his mind out of both boredom and worrying he would regenerate out his quota before being rescued. For an immortal like Clara, such confinement would be a living death.

Or maybe Ashildr had done something to her? She’d been in Clara’s TARDIS, lurking in the background, when the neuroblock was activated. He hadn’t seen her in the diner, but she must have been nearby. She might have been responsible for Clara’s evident confidence in piloting her TARDIS. But this is the same woman who had betrayed the Doctor and Clara on Trap Street, and intentionally or not had triggered this whole sad scenario by getting Clara killed. Ashildr had tried to defect responsibility for it, but he wasn’t buying it. If she had done anything more to Clara, the Doctor resolved to make good on his threat to rain hell upon her for the rest of time.

He hoped he was reading too much into it. Clara’s TARDIS could also simply have broken down and the two had spent the last century or so, relatively speaking, trying to fix it. He could relate.

His fingers crossed that nothing sinister was afoot, the Doctor had piloted his TARDIS to the planet, which he found out in short order actually did have a name; it was just called The Park by the locals. The Earth year was 6473 A.D., which happened to be the five hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the human colony. 

Unfortunately, bad government, a poor economy, a homeworld that had forgotten them—due to Earth’s inhabitants having been forced to evacuate because of the planet being rendered uninhabitable by solar flares—and an environment that turned against the people around Year 300, meant the inhabitants of The Park were, by this point, perpetually destitute and living in jungles of concrete and ruined buildings that made it clear from the outset that whoever had coined the nickname The Park had been being bitterly ironic. 

After being accosted for spare change moments after his arrival by a young child who received a small nugget of pure gold that was hopefully still worth something in 6473, the Doctor was reminded of some of the poorhouses he’d seen in Victorian London. 

The entire _planet_ was pretty much a poorhouse.

The Doctor soon found Clara’s TARDIS in a clearing near the centre of the city. It wasn’t difficult; a 1950s-style American roadside diner, complete with petrol pumps, tended to stand out on an alien world in the sixty-fifth century. The Doctor wondered why her TARDIS hadn’t changed its appearance and then laughed—another broken chameleon circuit! If Type 40s weren’t already obsolete and long off warranty by this time, he had a good mind to demand a recall. 

He’d long ago figured out how to repair his TARDIS’ circuit, of course (thanks, Donna), but didn’t bother because he liked the classic lines of the British police box. And it made it easier to remember where he parked. But, before setting Clara’s TARDIS to return to Gallifrey (after all, once they were together again, why would they need two?), he’d fix the circuit. He gave strong consideration to having her TARDIS adopt the shape of a big hand giving the backwards V-sign—“For the lolz,” as River sometimes said—before sending it back to the High Council.

Standing at the threshold of Clara’s diner, the Doctor took another deep breath to push down an uncharacteristic panic attack. Would she be upset? After all, there were damn good reasons why one of them needed to have their memories blocked. And the Doctor still carried guilt over the fact he had planned to do it to Clara without her permission. He had deserved what he got. Would she trust him again?

He knocked on the door. Nothing happened. The Doctor leaned in towards the faux glass; he could make out the full-size dining room within the chameleon shell. In the dimness of the interior—lit only by the natural light coming through the windows—the Doctor saw a large, garish portrait of Elvis Presley on a doorway. A memory of him playing a song— _her song_ —on his guitar came to mind. The Elvis door was slightly ajar and the Doctor could detect the tell-tale glow of the control console beyond. He pounded harder on the glass. Still nothing.

Well, the Doctor had thought, I don’t spend all my time in my TARDIS when I visit a place, either.

He had turned to leave and was startled to see a petite, dark-haired woman with a stoic expression leaning against one of the nondescript petrol pumps, staring at him. 

The Doctor and Ashildr looked at each other wordlessly before the immortal, forever preserved with the appearance of a sixteen-year-old Viking girl, broke the impasse.

“You’ve found us, then,” she said, without inflection.

“Obviously,” he replied. “Hello, Me.” That wasn’t the Doctor having a sudden crisis of identity; a few centuries into her extended life, Ashildr had either forgotten her birth name or chosen to call herself Me. Just Me.

“The neuroblock failed?” she asked, her tone wary, but still virtually emotionless. 

“I experienced a … trigger. Everything’s come back to me.”

“Including the fact you are in love with Clara.”

“Yes.” There was no point in obfuscating things; Ashildr (he hated calling her Me) had known back on Gallifrey. Hell, she probably knew it back in the Viking village when Clara had intended to kiss the Doctor on the cheek for luck before their final gambit against the Mire, only for the Doctor to turn his head at the wrong/right moment and receive the kiss smack on his lips, which the two held for a bit longer than perhaps was necessary. Just one of many little moments that now resided in the Doctor’s memory again. For better, or for worse.

“You know you shouldn’t be here,” Ashildr/Me said as she moved from the pumps towards the diner door with a definite air of _don’t-follow-me-inside_.

The Doctor took hold of her arm as she passed. “I don’t care,” he said, before releasing it after receiving a death glare. “Sorry about that.”

“Never touch me again. I don’t want you to see her. She’s happy here.”

“Happy with _you_ , you mean,” the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. 

For the first time, Ashildr cracked a smile in response to his implication. “No, Doctor, I haven’t stolen her away. I stopped caring about such things trillions of years ago. A friend? Yes, I hope so. And I hope she has forgiven me for what happened on Trap Street; we’ve agreed never to talk about it. That’s all.”

“I’m not jealous,” the Doctor lied. 

“Whatever,” Ashildr dismissed. “I still don’t want you to see her.”

“With all due respect, Ashildr-”

“-Me-”

“-Me, I think that should be left up to Clara.”

“All you’d do is hurt her again. She’s finally found peace. And so have I.”

“Why have you stopped here? You could go anywhere in time and space, but you chose to come here after only travelling a short while,” the Doctor said. “Not exactly the garden spot of the universe.”

A momentary flash of anger clouded Ashildr’s dark eyes. Then her ironic mood returned. “It used to be. I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you how and why you were spying on us. The answer, Doctor, is we found a place where we are needed. Where we can make a difference. It wasn’t planned this way, but it happened. And this is where we’re going to stay. I know about your time on Trenzalore. I know you can relate.”

“Why are you needed?”

Ashildr unlocked the diner door. “You might as well come in so I can tell you. Do you still take your coffee with twelve sugars?”


	3. Of Holding Hands and Red Bouquets

_Yes, Clara Oswald is beautiful_ , the Doctor thought again as his memories returned to the present and he continued to watch Clara handing out food in front of the nameless building.

“Today, it’s food parcels. Yesterday, she helped to rebuild a school, even though she’s rubbish with a hammer. She starts teaching when it reopens next week,” Ashildr said as she came around the pillar. Clara looked up, saw her from a distance, and waved. Ashildr smiled thinly and waved back; the Doctor had already ducked behind the pillar.

“I thought you wanted her to see you,” Ashildr said through the smile.

The Doctor came back into view as Clara turned her attention back to the children. “I don’t know.”

“I’ve never known you to be so uncertain, Doctor.”

“I _was_ certain. Dead certain. Until you told me about…”

“…about how Clara found a home here? How I did?”

“You don’t have to come with us. Stick around and you’ll be Mayor Me again before long. Or you can leave here and go wherever or whenever you want. I won’t stop you.”

“I’m sure you’d be happy to leave me the spare TARDIS and go on your merry way. Whatever. I don’t really care. And once you’ve lived for a hundred trillion years, the time we’ve spent here has passed like a blink of an eye for me. But for once, this is not about me. Look at her, Doctor. Look closely. What do you see? Look beyond the superficial.”

The Doctor watched Clara as she handed out the last of the hampers and took a child’s hand.

“She’s happy,” he said.

“Yes. She knows some day she has to return to Trap Street and that damned Quantum Shade. We could have just kept travelling, living like intergalactic hedonists, but Clara wanted to give what was left of her existence some meaning before she went back.” 

Ashildr glanced back towards where Clara was standing and noticed her friend was now walking in her direction.

“Make your decision quickly, Doctor,” she whispered, because she’ll see you in-” Turning towards the pillar, she saw that the Doctor had vanished. The word “coward” began to form on her lips. _No_ , she thought, _not a coward. The Doctor would be listening. Watching. Still deciding whether to upend Clara’s life again? Very well, Time Lord. I’ll let Clara speak for herself._

“Hey, Me,” Clara called as got closer.

“Hey, yourself. Busy day?”

“Yeah,” Clara said as the two began to walk together. “We need more boxes. There are still a few hundred families that are going to be hungry tonight. Have you fixed the TARDIS food machines yet?”

Ashildr shook her head. “They’re stubborn bastards. We thoroughly burned them out with the last batch and I think it’s the ship preventing us from overusing them again.”

Clara frowned. “I miss the Doctor’s TARDIS. She and I didn’t get along forever, but we came to an understanding along the way. She’d do this in a heartbeat. If she had a heart, that is. She actually had more of a black-holey thing.”

Ashildr took advantage of the unexpected opening that saved her the effort of steering the conversation. “Do you still miss the Doctor?”

Clara looked quizzical. “Of course I do. Is that Mire tech in your head broken? It’s not like I don’t talk about him almost every day.”

“What would you do if you ever saw him again?”

“He wouldn’t remember me, so what would be the point?”

“Humour me.”

“I … don’t know, to be honest. I still love him, and I’d like nothing better than to travel with him again. Like the old days. I never really gave a damn about seeing exotic planets or defeating diabolical masterminds; I just enjoyed being with him. It just felt so … right. But he won’t remember me anymore and …” She stopped walking. “I remember how I felt in the diner, Ashildr. He was looking right at me. I could have reached over and snogged him senseless, he was that close. I wanted to. Badly. But he didn’t see me. Not anymore. I felt the same emptiness I did the day I lost Danny. But this time I really felt alone, because I didn’t have the Doctor with me anymore. So it felt worse and, no disrespect, you’re the best friend I could ask for, but you’re not the Doctor.”

“Do you think the Doctor loved you?”

“He loves everybody.”

“You know what I mean.”

Clara started walking again. “I really wasn’t sure. I didn’t think so, not in that way. At least, not till the end. We had a few moments here and there where I thought, maybe, but we always seemed to find a reason to change the subject or Missy or a Zygon would act up and we’d get sidetracked. I’m pretty sure he was going to tell me he loved me when we said goodbye on Trap Street before … you know … but I had to stop him otherwise I couldn’t have gone through with it and he’d have probably killed everyone if I had. But it was when he told me, down in the Cloisters, that he’d spent billions of years in his own personal hell to save me, and when I asked why he just said he had a ‘duty of care.’ He’d been saying ‘I love you’ to me all along.”

Ashildr caught sight of the Doctor standing in the entrance to a nearby alley. She made eye contact from the distance and knew he’d heard every word. She wondered if he ever knew of the uncertainty Clara felt about him. About them.

“What about you? Did you ever tell him that you loved him?”

“I actually did a few times. I don’t think he heard me or that it registered. The last time was in the Cloisters. But he was so out of it after billions of years in his confession dial I’m not sure how much got through. Not that it mattered as it all got erased a few hours later anyway.”

“Not erased, Clara. Blocked. Technically, those memories are still in his brain. Some day he might remember.”

“I don’t want him to.”

“Why?”

“Ashildr, you weren’t with us during those last few years. Our relationship got pretty intense. Not sexually, though if he’d asked me, I wouldn’t have said no. And believe me, I considered asking him more than once. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I think he was a silver fox, and he was cute when he wore the bow-tie and I think he was very attractive as Captain Grumpy, too. Sandshoes… meh.”

“You were saying things got intense.”

“It got to the point where, if I got a runny nose, the Doctor was convinced it was pneumonia. If I got captured by the bad guys, he’d freak out and threaten to bring Armageddon to them—you saw that first-hand. He kept on about that duty of care. It started to piss me off, and I told him so.”

“But he didn’t stop.”

“Of course he didn’t. And, well, pissed off that I was or not, we were inseparable. Teaching for me just became a time-killer between our travelling. I don’t think I slept in my own bed more than a couple dozen times during that final year. Even before that, before I lost Danny, my weeks ended up being just countdowns to Wednesday. And if the Doctor was late, or missed it, I became a total worrier myself. He went on about his duty of care, but I felt I had a duty of care for him too. I guess we were perfect for each other. My heart belonged to him and I didn’t want to give him up for anything. And now I want to know why you’re suddenly quizzing me about the man all of a sudden.”

Ashildr glanced again at the alleyway. “Nothing. I just … would you give this up if he showed up again to take you away?” She gestured at the ruined buildings and broken concrete and back down the road in the direction of where the school rebuild was nearing completion.

“I can’t give it up. These people—my people—got a raw deal. Earth isn’t going to be inhabited again for another five thousand years, and they need someone to look out for them. Even if it’s just helping them put food on the table and rebuild after another ice storm. I could travel, become an immortal tourist, but what’s the good in that? And it’s not like I had to put a gun to your head to stay here. You’re invested in this as much as I am.”

“I know, but…”

“So, where is he, then?”

It takes a lot to startle a one hundred trillion year-old. Give Clara a prize. “Who?”

“I’m not stupid. The Doctor is here. He arrived when I was handing out the boxes and you met him first and told him he should go away, right? I assume the Doctor told you to go to hell so you’re having him listen in to what we’re saying in the hope he does a runner.”

Ashildr shrugged and gestured towards the alley. The Doctor, revealing himself at last, just stood there, smiling awkwardly and giving a small wave. 

Clara frowned and walked slowly in his direction. The Doctor started to worry. She looked cross.

Then the frown became a supernova grin, the walk became a run, the run became a jump, the Doctor caught her and the jump became a hug that had the Doctor spinning Clara around with a joyous cry.

“Clara! My Clara!”

The spin stopped and the Doctor returned Clara’s feet to solid ground. The Doctor saw that there were tears on Clara’s cheeks. He wiped one away with a thumb.

“I thought I’d lost you forever,” Clara said softly.

“Oh, my Clara, you know I never follow the rules. The neuroblock was calibrated for full human so I guess it only worked half as well on me,” the Doctor said. 

Clara and the Doctor held each other’s gaze.

“You look amazing,” she said.

“You, too.”

Clara gave a grey curl a playful tug. “Still rocking the floofy hair, I see.”

“I considered getting it cut for the occasion, but you know how it goes, I show up and the barber runs away screaming into the night.”

The two laughed.

“Well, um,” Clara said. “Let’s go back to my place and get caught up.”

“Will there be lemonade?”

“The best in the universe.”


	4. Laughing Eyes and Simple Ways

Ashildr sat alone in one of the fake diner’s booths, looking on glumly as Clara and the Doctor sat at the counter, sipping from two comically large tumblers of lemonade.

“I didn’t think you could drink fluids, what with being suspended in time and all that,” the Doctor said. 

“I don’t have to eat anymore, but I found I do need to drink otherwise my throat dries up and I start talking like Tom Waits sings,” Clara said. “Trust me, you don’t want to hear that. My rendition of _God’s Away on Business_ would last about five seconds on _Pop Idol_.”

The Doctor and Clara had spent hours catching up, with the Doctor giving her a potted synopsis of his last twenty-five years, playing down his discussion about River after he noticed the cloud that passed over her eyes whenever he invoked her name; the same eyes that teared up as he recounted how Clara’s name had been added alongside Danny’s on Coal Hill’s memorial wall.

“Sort of makes it more real, doesn’t it,” she said. “Maybe that’s why it triggered your memories of me?”

The Doctor lowered his voice. “No, my memories of you had been reasserting themselves for quite some time before.” He took her hand, stroking her knuckles with his thumb. She squeezed back in return. “But they were just memories of someone I knew as a fond friend. The memorial wall unlocked … the feelings.”

“Oh, what kind of feelings?”

“Does it need saying?” The Doctor replied. 

What prevented Clara from getting annoyed at the Doctor, after all they’d been through together and apart, still being evasive on the subject, was the minute flicker of his eyes in the direction where Ashildr was sitting. Her annoyance shifted to her companion. “Ashildr,” she said, not looking over shoulder. “I think I’m good here. Can we have some privacy?”

“No.”

Clara spun around on the stool and hopped down. She advanced on Ashildr, stopped in front of her table and pointed towards a corner by the entrance to the console room. Ashildr got up and went there, sulkily, followed by Clara who grabbed her friend by the shoulder and spun her around, hissing: “What the hell are you playing at?” 

“We’ve discussed this,” Ashildr said. “Your story with the Doctor is over. This is your home now. These people need you.”

“So does he.” Clara looked over at the counter where the Doctor was trying his best not to eavesdrop. “I can see it in his eyes.”

“Then ask him to stay. It wouldn’t be the first time the Doctor has chosen to set down roots somewhere to help people. It would be right up his alley.”

Clara shook her head. “No, I can’t ask him to do that. I saw what nine hundred years on Trenzalore did to him. It broke my heart.”

“So you’re going to give up your destiny to be with him, then. You’re a hypocrite. Were you just lying to me a couple of hours ago?”

“Maybe _this_ is my destiny. Everyone thinks The Hybrid is this awful thing, but it doesn’t have to be. We know the danger. The two of us, united forever, think of the good we might do! For The Park and for, well, everywhere.”

“And I thought I was the one with the planet-sized ego.”

The Doctor, giving up at trying to ignore the argument happening a few feet away, cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Clara. I should go. I’m … so proud of you, and I don’t want to-”

Clara broke away from Ashildr and crossed the floor to take hold of one of the Doctor’s hands. “Don’t you dare. I’m not letting you go now.”

“Clara, you have to. I agree with Ashildr. It’s not right for me to take you away from the work you’re doing.”

She took his hand. “Then come back for me.”

“Sorry?”

“You know where I am. And this disaster won’t last forever. Someday there’ll be a breakthrough, right?”

Ashildr piped up. “It could be over tomorrow with the Doctor’s help. But he won’t help you because he knows this is a fixed point in time.” 

Clara turned her attention towards her friend, incredulously. “What the hell are you talking about? Doctor?”

The Doctor was thinking hard. He’d sensed the fixed point, but it hadn’t made that much of an impression, and in fact he had indeed been considering ways to help the people. Why is it vital that The Park remain destitute? Then it came to him. 

“I remember now,” he said. “In about four thousand years, Earth will become inhabitable again, and a new Golden Age of Humankind will begin as the original inhabitants begin to repopulate the planet.”

“Sounds good,” Clara said. “Can’t wait to see it.”

“You don’t understand, Clara. Most of the human race will have spent five millennia either in cryogenic freeze aboard vessels like _Nerva Beacon_ —that was the first place I visited after I regenerated into the talking scarf—or living aboard generational vessels. To say they’ll be out of practice at building or, rather, rebuilding a world is putting it mildly.”

“I still don’t follow.”

“Clara, by the time Earth is set for repopulation, the inhabitants of The Park will have finally rebuilt their world here. And it’ll be thriving to the point where some consideration will be given to simply renaming it Earth 2.0 and making it the new home of the human race. Instead, the people here will be called upon—relied upon—to return and help rebuild the homeworld. The future architects of the new Golden Age of Humankind will be born here, thousands of years from now. And in order for them to be born, generations of ancestors will have to live a hard life, building knowledge and the drive to improve their lot in life and adapt.”

Clara slumped against a stool. “So there’s no point in me doing anything? I’ve been wasting my time?”

Ashildr put her hand on Clara’s shoulder. “No, you are giving comfort to people today. The children. Their families. You’re giving them hope.”

“Hope for what? Hope that the rest of their lives will be spent living in this hellhole with no hope of things ever getting better as long as they’re around, and their children are around? What the hell good is that?”

“They can still make their lives better, Clara,” the Doctor said. “Human resiliency is one of your most amazing and remarkable traits. It’s what I love about you.” 

There was a knock at the diner door. The Doctor appeared worried, but Clara waved away his concerns as Ashildr went to the entrance. “We’re not exactly living incognito, Doctor,” Clara mumbled, sullenly. “The TARDISy bits we try to keep secret, but otherwise everyone knows this is where Ashildr and I live.”

Ashildr met a young boy at the door and nodded as the bashful-looking lad handed over a small envelope. She looked at it and sighed before saying goodbye to the child and bringing the package to Clara. “More fan mail for the Queen,” she said with a smirk.

“Oh, I wish they wouldn’t do that. Makes me feel awkward,” Clara said. “And I’m not a queen.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” Ashildr replied.

Clara sighed and turned to the Doctor. “Ever since I let slip that one of my echoes was Queen Victoria, she hasn’t let me live it down.” She slit the envelope open with a chipped fingernail and took out a beautifully drawn card on homemade paper. She looked at it for a few moments and handed it to the Doctor, tears forming again in her eyes.

The Doctor looked down and the inscription he read made his hearts sink.

     **To Elena Alison**

     **Our hero**

     **Love, Sarah, Philip and the kids**

He handed the card back to Clara and barely heard what she said by way of explanation. That Sarah and Philip were the parents of four children Clara had rescued from a flood a few days earlier. She’d kept one alive for hours doing CPR until someone had located enough fuel for a generator to get oxygen equipment running.

And then she explained that “Elena Alison” was a name she’d adopted for public use, well aware that the Time Lords were still on the hunt for her. It had come from her mum: Elena was the formal version of Ellie and Alison had been her middle name. It was supposed to be Clara’s middle name, too, but her dad had forgotten to write it down on the hospital form, rendering her middle name-less.

The Doctor looked hard at Clara, ignoring most of this. And then he moved his eyes over to Ashildr. No words were needed. _You knew, Ashildr. You knew all along._

Ashildr’s unspoken reply was a nearly imperceptible nod. If he didn’t know any better, he could have sworn he saw sorrow briefly cloud her pupils.

“What?” Clara said to the Doctor, missing the exchange.

“Is it safe to walk outside?” the Doctor asked.

Ashildr shrugged: “Crime isn’t really a thing on The Park, Doctor. There’s nothing much to steal.”

He turned to Clara. “Walk with me. Please.”

She nodded.

“You’re not invited,” he said to Ashildr.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she replied.

Clara and the Doctor took tight hold of each other’s hand as they explored the rubble-strewn streets. Eventually, guided by Clara, they came upon a clearing with a small hill that offered a vista of the city, such as it was. 

For a time, they stood in silence, the Doctor was content to feel Clara leaning against him, her arm around his waist. 

“At its height, this would have been a dazzling display of lights and bustle,” Clara said. “The architecture on those towers is actually quite beautiful. I sometimes wish I’d been an architect.”

The Doctor nodded. “A lot of thought was given to laying out this colony; it wasn’t their fault the planet’s environment went pear-shaped and Earth was forced to abandon them. But someday these people will end up saving Earth.”

A catch in the Doctor’s voice made Clara look up at him. “What is it? You’ve acted strange ever since I showed you that card. Not used to seeing someone else get the kudos?”

“No, I … I’ve been thinking about what Ashildr said and … Clara, you know how I feel about you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What?”

Clara’s eyes were dark and blazing. “You’ve never really bloody told me. You just speak in riddles, euphemisms, ‘duty of care.’ There’s no Ashildr here. No Time Lords listening in. No Missy. No countdown to the raven. I made a promise to Danny never to say this to anyone else, but if it’ll help, I’ll say it first…”

“I love you. I promised no one. I love you.”

Clara smiled. “See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She put her arms around his neck. “Now, there’s also this.” She pushed her lips against his. After a moment of awkwardness, because the Doctor wasn’t expecting a kiss, he responded. They stood like that for a short while until the Doctor reluctantly broke away.

“We should have done that more often,” he said with a laugh.

“You don’t know how close you came at the Drum. And in the Cloisters. And when we were in the dark on that space station over Neptune. And the train with the mummy. And after that business with the crimson goop.”

“That last one was the other me.”

“So?”

“Fair point.”

“You’re a better kisser than he was anyway.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “I thought our first time ever was at Ashildr’s village? I was already this man.” 

“You snogged Victorian me way back when, remember?”

“I didn’t think you’d count Clara Oswin.”

“Before I knew about my echoes, I’d occasionally have dreams about them. I just thought they were just dreams, but I understood later that they were really memories. And there was one where we kissed before going after some ice woman in Victorian London. That was real, too.”

“This whole thing doesn’t feel real,” the Doctor said. “It’s been so long.”

“What? It’s only been twenty-five years for you. I’ve been missing you for a century without the luxury of having forgotten you, think about that.”

“I’m sorry.”

Clara hugged the Doctor. “You can make it up to me. I’ve enjoyed travelling, and helping the people here has been some of the most rewarding work of my life. But it’s been lonely.”

“You never found anyone to measure up to Danny, then?”

“Or you. I guess it was an impossible task.”

“What about Ashidlr? You two seem to get on. And she doesn’t seem to complain about what she’s doing here.”

Clara looked out over the city. “Ashildr has been a good friend. And I’ve forgiven her for Trap Street because I know it wasn’t her fault I got killed. But she’s never been interested in that way—said something about being too old to be arsed. I won’t lie to you; yes, there was somebody. You’d have liked him. He was the best of you and the best of Danny rolled into one. Peter was thirty-five when I met him. He was ninety-eight when he died. I wore the same outfit to his funeral that I wore on our first date.”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor repeated.

“And I’m sorry about River, really, I am. Guess neither of us have any luck. What a pair we make, eh?”

The Doctor closed his eyes tight. As if doing so was going to make what was about to happen easier.

“Clara, you can’t come with me. I can’t take you away from here.”

Clara stammered. “But … but, Doctor, this is what you want. This is what I want. I’m not making a huge difference here, just helping a few people out. Together, maybe we can find a solution for the entire planet, and then we can go on to the next adventure like we used to. Ashildr has proven herself to be a good person and trustworthy; she deserves her own TARDIS. I want to be with you.”

“No, Clara. You don’t. I might not have the same expiry date as humans do, but before too long I’m going to change and I won’t be the person you fell in love with anymore.”

“Doctor, you know that wouldn’t be my first rodeo. I’ve met all of you and I frankly still think Captain Grumpy was the sexiest one of you all.”

“Hey.”

“OK, present company excepted!” Clara laughed for a moment, but then the frown returned. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

“Clara, you … have a destiny. And it isn’t with me.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“Please, don’t make me explain. Probably said too much already.” He suddenly couldn’t look Clara in the eye.

“Then why do this to me?” Clara said, her eyes blazing. “Why did you come? Get my hopes up? Or were you just being selfish?”

“Selfish?”

“Yeah, bloody selfish. You mope for years about me, then you finally get up off your arse to track me down, upend my life—again—and now that you’ve seen me and snogged me, you’re going off in your TARDIS to some random planet where you’ll probably find another random companion. Will you fall in love with her, too? Or was your intention to clean up a loose end? Show me your hand again, Doctor—I’d better check to make sure it’s not glowing.”

“Clara-”

“I told you to go to hell once before. Don’t make me say it again. But please—leave.”

“Not until I say this. Yes, I confess part of this was selfish, but I had every intention of taking you away from here. And not just that, I was even going to ask you to m…” He trailed off, swallowing what he was about to say.

“Ask me what?”

“It’s not important.”

Clara let it go, knowing better. “What changed? Don’t lie to me.”

“Being a Time Lord gives me a particular perspective on history, you know that. And… I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you anymore. I can’t take you with me. And I can’t stay. I can’t even tell you why.”

Clara turned away from him, hugging herself.

“Clara, do you love me?”

“No… yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

“…Yes.”

“Then please, please know that this is the last thing I want. I wanted us to be together forever. I still do. Maybe, who knows, that could still happen. But it can’t happen today.”

“You expect me to accept that?”

The Doctor turned her around gently and took her hand, stroking it softly. “No more so than I was expected to accept your death. But, Clara, trust me that I know the endgame on this. You need to stay here and continue your work. Someday, you will understand why, but I’m sorry, Clara, I’m so, so sorry—it’s going to take a while before that happens.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry, Doctor.” She put her hand on the Doctor’s cheek and this time she was the one wiping away a tear with her thumb. The Doctor put his hand over hers and kissed her palm.

“This feeling I have,” he said, “this will not change. There will be no more neuroblocks, no retcon amnesia drugs, no hypnosis. You asked earlier if I was being selfish, but to this I freely admit I am—I don’t want to lose a single memory of you ever again. Or what I feel. And I know I have to live with myself on this. But I’ll keep calm and carry on.”

“Do you have to leave right away?” Clara asked.

“Now that I know… what I know, the sooner I go, the better. But I can probably safely stay for a little while longer.”

“Good.” She leaned up and kissed him again. “That leaves us some time to create new memories.”


	5. Twilight Trimmed with Purple Haze

The Doctor adjusted the controls of his TARDIS as he prepared to depart The Park. 

He was alone now. One last hug. One final kiss. A held hand. A gaze held. And new memories of … well, that’s just between Clara and the Doctor and the sky overhead.

There had been a shared, sad smile as the Doctor left Clara at the threshold of her TARDIS. The Doctor had then walked back to this ship in a daze, not looking back, violently condemning the Laws of Time in his mind the entire way and at one point punching a wooden post so hard, he bruised a knuckle and felt satisfaction when he saw the thing fall over. He then spent a minute repairing the post. He had nothing against it nor its owner. The chore helped calm him a bit, which meant at least that he was able to set the navigation without his hands trembling.

The door to the TARDIS opened moments before the Doctor was about to send the ship into the vortex.

He didn’t look up. “Clara, please, I-” 

But it wasn’t Clara.

“Tell me,” Ashildr said. “I know this colony has to go through hell as a fixed point in time. But why exactly can’t you take Clara, or me, with you?”

“I thought you knew.”

“I know Clara is a fixed point. I’m no Time Lord, but over the aeons I’ve developed senses. What I don’t know are the details; her TARDIS refused to provide information.”

“Fail-safe,” the Doctor shrugged. “I can call up any information I want about my past incarnations, or even information about, say, your future, but she won’t tell me what happens to me next week, or next regeneration, and she wouldn’t allow me to show you your future right now if you asked me to. TARDISes are actually hardwired to self-destruct if pushed too far on that point.”

“I know. Nearly lost ours that way,” Ashildr said with a smile. “What about Clara?”

“It has to do with the the alias she uses here. Elena Alison.”

Ashildr shrugged. “Her mother’s given names. And?”

“Names evolve over time, just like language. Surely you’ve heard of Architect Elenson? The Architect of Humanity’s new golden age. When Earth is repopulated thousands of years from now, she leads the citizens of The Park in helping rebuild the planet. It is the calming and steady presence of many women named Elenson over the course of centuries that keeps the human race from tearing itself apart. Think of the legends, Ashildr: how Elenson was supposedly ancient, yet ageless? Kind and wise, never cruel nor cowardly? What if there weren’t many Architect Elensons, no successors over the centuries, but just the one? _Elen_ -a Ali- _son_.”

Ashildr scoffed. “Seriously?”

“Clara’s destiny is to lead the entire human race into an age of renewed enlightenment, of exploration, of science. Did you know a discovery made during this age was, or will be, adapted by the Time Lords to perfect their own time-travel technology, including TARDISes? Not bad for a former nanny from Blackpool, eh?”

“No. Not bad.”

“Is Clara OK?”

“No. That’s one reason why I came here. She wanted to be alone.” The Doctor gave Ashildr a concerned look. “Don’t worry, I took the precaution of extracting a couple of fluid links from the console. She’s not going to go rogue.”

The Doctor nodded and went back to flipping switches and entering co-ordinates into his own console.

“Are you going to see her then? In the future?” Ashildr asked. “Clara and I might have to take the long path, but you could be there waiting for us five minutes from now from your perspective.”

The Doctor’s face darkened. “I want to. I wish I could. I really wish I could. Clara asked me the same question. But that’s going to be impossible.”

“Tell me.”

“No. The risk is too great. Just trust that I have a good reason and I can’t risk Clara finding out through you, even by accident.”

“There is more to the story you’re not telling me.”

“Of course there’s more to the bloody story!” the Doctor snapped. “You should know how this damned game is played by now.”

Ashildr nodded, accepting the criticism. “I don’t like it, but I understand. Of course I do. So where will you go now?”

“Where I always go. Away. Just away.”

“And what about me?” she asked. The Doctor was surprised to note that, even though she was virtually … no, she’d lived a hundred trillion years, she _was_ … immortal, she still let a note of uncertainty enter her voice.

“You know I can’t tell you that, either. You’ll have to find out for yourself.” Then he smiled. “But I’m sure you’ll be just as amazing as Clara.”

Ashildr smiled back before nodding and heading for the exit. Just before leaving, she turned back.

“Sarcasm and snark are my middle names, Doctor,” she said. “But I want you to know that, speaking as someone who has been both an enemy to you and, I hope, a friend, there is no doubt in my mind that what you feel for Clara is real. And the sacrifice you are making … I don’t think I could do it. You have always had my respect, Doctor. But never more than at this moment.”

“Thank you, Lady Me.”

Ashildr left the Doctor alone with his thoughts. A few minutes before, now he knew what to look for, he’d been able to quickly scan The Park’s and Earth’s future records to discover any clue as to Ashildr’s ultimate fate. It came in the form of, of all things, an old-fashioned obituary that appeared in an old-fashioned printed newspaper that had been published on Earth two centuries after its recolonization. 

Ashildr passed away at the age of 108, surrounded by a large family—children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. Seems at some point one the same generation of scientists who ushered humanity into a new age of enlightenment under Clara’s wisdom and guidance had found a way to finally deactivate the Mire healing technology that had kept Ashildr alive for so long. Once disabled, she’d begun to age normally and was able to live to a ripe old age. 

There was absolutely no way he was going to jeopardise that future for Ashildr by giving her spoilers now.

With that thought, he threw a lever, the same one Clara always enjoyed being given the chance to use herself, and the TARDIS entered the vortex.

Although the Doctor knew Time would someday prove kind to Ashildr, for Clara … that was another story.

Yes, she was destined to be the saviour of the human race, ruling benevolently for a thousand years. But should he have warned her about how her reign was destined to end? 

He’d heard the story, of course. He knew bloody everything, didn’t he? But he never made the connection until his attention was drawn towards it. The end of “the final” Elenson’s story snapped into renewed focus.

The legend passed down through the ages had evolved, of course, but it didn’t take much to peel back the layers of embellishment. Elenson was said to have transformed into an angel dressed in blue and black, ascending to a new plane of existence with the help of an angel of black and an angel of red who suddenly appeared one day. The legend said Elenson and the angels argued for six days and five nights. 

“Not without him!” Elenson was said to have cried.

“He whom you need no longer exists,” came the reply. 

Four times Elenson cried “Not without him.” Four times she got a similar reply. 

The legends speculated that Elenson was referring to a saviour from another world who was her one true love, but they had been separated by time and by thousands of years. He was immortal, like she was, the stories went.

Ultimately, the red angel made a promise to Elenson that she would be joining “him” in … at this point the legends diverge with names of various afterlives from Earth’s ancient cultural history being cited: Valhalla, Hel, Summerland, the Otherworld, Heaven. But there was one other name, a familiar name that had attracted his attention years ago, but he’d never followed through with investigating: The Matrix. The reassurance made, Elenson had finally agreed to go with “the angels” and, after a tearful farewell, the legend says a door opened in a hillside and Elenson stepped through it and the last thing people heard was the sound of a bird crowing before the door snapped shut.

The angels who stayed behind were said to be weeping as they, themselves, ascended into the clouds. The most common legend said they entered a column of white that trumpeted as it launched into the air.

Clara had been waiting for the Doctor all that time. But clearly he never came. And, apparently, by the relative time the two Time Lords arrived on the repopulated Earth to take her back to Trap Street to fulfil her ultimate destiny and face the raven, he was dead. Or perhaps they were only referring to this incarnation. Maybe he was destined to forget her again. 

No matter. Having pieced everything together, that made what happened to Clara truly a fixed point in time. Just like seeing the dates of Amy’s and Rory’s deaths sealed their fate. He was powerless to stop it once he knew specific information and time could no longer be rewritten. 

For the Doctor, the realization that there would be no last-minute reprieve for Clara, no clever solution … it filled him with immense sadness. But he was powerless to do anything. Any interference in destiny would create the exact same paradox that could have destroyed the universe the last time he decided to interfere.

That meant he could never see Clara again. Not face to face. He couldn’t even communicate with her. Just like Amy and Rory. It would have been so simple to hop in his TARDIS and visit them—even retrieve them from the era in which they’d found themselves after being touched by a Weeping Angel. But once he saw the tombstone with their dates of death, he was powerless. 

And this knowledge had almost shattered him. Thank god River was able to stay in touch with them, for a time.

But he had no River to turn to with Clara. He couldn’t risk jeopardizing Ashildr’s positive future just for the selfishness of having a “hello” passed to Clara. She had to move on, without him. 

And maybe the red Time Lord had been correct; maybe by the time Clara faced the raven, his consciousness might have actually already been placed in the Matrix. He hoped harder than he’d ever hoped before that they’d been truthful. Because if they were lying to Clara, there was every chance he’d finish the job he’d started as the Time War reached its zenith. If not for Clara.

The Doctor stood motionless for close to an hour. Thinking. Working out. It couldn’t end like this. If nothing else, he needed to know if the legend was correct about the Matrix. He knew he couldn’t move on without the reassurance that, for Clara, the future held more than pain and cold cobblestones.

Cursing himself for his lack of willpower and praying he wasn’t going to screw everything up, the Doctor adjusted the TARDIS’ course mid-flight to the terrible day when, for Clara, it all ended.


	6. Quiet Thoughts Come Floating Down

The TARDIS must have known the risks because three things happened when she materialized on top of a hill overlooking the amphitheatre where the two Time Lords had allowed Clara to give one final farewell speech before entering the portal and returning to Trap Street.

First, she arrived in the middle of the speech, as close to the moment as possible. Less chance of the Doctor losing self-control and interfering beforehand. She knew her thief well.

Two, she landed silently, something she did from time to time, though usually only when the Doctor forgot to leave the parking brake on.

Third, she took the shape of an oak tree. The Doctor was momentarily confused when he exited the TARDIS and saw that, for the first time in aeons (at least since an ill-fated and short-lived attempt at fixing the chameleon circuit back in his sixth life), the ship had actually chosen an appropriate disguise. “Thank you,” he whispered to the ship. 

He quietly made his way through a crowd of people looking down on the amphitheatre. Clara, looking so tiny in the grey blouse with white trim and black trousers she had been wearing that terrible day on Trap Street—but otherwise just as perfect and beautiful as she’d been the last time he saw her only an hour earlier (by his reckoning, millennia from hers)—was flanked by The General of the Time Lord armies (the Doctor could clearly see her fierce expression from a distance) and the Time Lord in red actually wasn’t a Time Lord at all, but rather Ohila from the Sisterhood of Karn. Close enough to a Time Lord. 

Good, the Doctor thought. Not total strangers to see her off then. Glass half-full.

“I wish we could hear her,” a young man said off to the Doctor’s left. “I can’t believe she’s leaving us. It must be a joke or something. We don’t even know why.”

His companion, a woman about the same age, nodded. “None of us have known life without one of the Elensons, and now they say she’s going to be the last one. How will we survive?”

An elderly woman next to her said, “She’s been preparing for this for a long time, so they say. The people in charge are ready. And, if not, we survived thousands of years without a planet to call home. We’ll muddle on.”

The Doctor smiled, and then felt, rather than heard, the start of a roar of applause and cheering that began near Clara and worked its way to the back of the crowd like a wave. The Doctor looked down towards Clara. His eyesight, superior to that of a human’s, was able to drink in her features from a distance. 

_Yes_ , he thought once more. _Clara Oswald is beautiful._

And then, as she finished her speech and the crowd was again cheering… Clara looked right at him. It didn’t matter that he was hundreds of feet away, it didn’t matter how she was able to do it. He knew: _she was looking right at him_. 

And then she smiled. A broad, happy smile. And she spoke. She didn’t speak very loudly, barely a whisper, because she knew her voice wouldn’t carry the distance anyway. She mouthed the words, and the Doctor read her lips.

“Run, you clever boy. And remember me.”

The Doctor smiled back. As the portal to Trap Street opened on the hillside behind her—something that made the audience gasp—Clara then mouthed something else.

“I don’t want you to see this. Please, go. I love you.”

“I love you too, Clara,” the Doctor replied, though he couldn’t be certain if she could now read his lips from the distance. Taking a deep breath, he turned away, closing his eyes tight. There was an eerie silence a few moments later, and the Doctor knew it was safe to turn back. 

The portal was gone. Clara was gone. The General and Ohila remained. They both looked a little shell-shocked. 

“I’m sorry,” he could see the General mouthing as the audience began to turn on the Time Lord and the Sister of Karn. The Doctor didn’t recall reading about a riot in the histories.

“You killed her!” he heard one large man bellow as he threw a stone at Ohila, who stopped it from hitting her in the face with a wave of her hand.

Suddenly, the two found themselves running for their lives down an alley leading away from the amphitheatre. Ohila tripped, but the General caught her and they continued on. 

“Where’s the damn TARDIS?” Ohila asked.

“Three blocks—in the other direction,” the General panted. “Our only hope is to find a safe place and lay low.”

“For how long, a generation? Why didn’t you park closer to the damn stage?”

They raced around a corner and nearly ran headlong into a gleaming silver cylinder: a naked TARDIS, stripped of its camouflage. As the crowd got closer, the door into the TARDIS opened to allow them entry. Not pausing to figure out the hows and whys, they entered the brightly lit control room of the General’s TARDIS. With a glowering Doctor standing at the console.

“Oh no,” the General said. Ohila’s reaction referred to the act of reproduction in the afterlife overseen by Satan.

“Language, Ohila,” the Doctor admonished. “People might get the wrong idea.” He threw a lever and the people outside gaped as the TARDIS launched itself into the air. “Figured I’d stick to how history described your departure,” the Doctor explained as he materialized the TARDIS properly at thirty thousand feet. “That was fun. Though we probably looked like an overheated hot water tank shooting upwards.” He set new co-ordinates.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The General reached for her holster.

“Guess.”

“Then you were a bit bloody late. I don’t know what was worse, trying to convince Clara to go quietly or her repeating how she wouldn’t go until she saw you again,” Ohila said.

“I know,” the Doctor said. “But you know why I couldn’t have come earlier. And I’d probably have spoiled your fun if I had.”

“Neither of us enjoyed having to send Miss Oswald back to her death. It had to be done,” the General said.

“Put your gun down, General. I’m piloting us over to where I parked my TARDIS and then I’ll be on my way. I have no idea where Clara’s TARDIS is, though.”

“It’s handled,” the General said in a way that indicated no elaboration was likely.

“Fair enough.” A deep _thump_ sound indicated the TARDIS had arrived at its destination. “Before I go, I just want you to answer for me, truthfully, one question.”

Ohila looked wary. “And that is?”

“What happened today will pass into human history, as you know full well. That’s why I couldn’t come back or change anything. It had become a fixed point in time. I said my goodbye to Clara long ago. I will have to live with that being enough. But the legend says you convinced her to go back by promising her that she’d be able to join me in the Matrix.”

The General and Ohila exchanged startled glances.

“I’m not asking for spoilers. I don’t need to know the details and you’ll probably screw things up too much if you tell me anyway. I just need to know that you were telling the truth. Can it be done?”

Ohila held out a small device. Ironically, it was identical in appearance to the neuroblocker.

“She’s in here. Everything she was: her thoughts, memories, feelings,” Ohila said, softly. “When we return to Gallifrey, she’ll be placed in the Matrix where you are waiting.”

“All of me?”

“The ones of you that matter.” 

“So I know, then? Matrix-me?” 

The General actually laughed. “Well, well, I guess that’s one mystery solved, Ohila. You owe me a drink.”

Ohila smiled back, then explained: “When we contacted you in the Matrix about this, you didn’t seem surprised at all. We were curious as to how you might have found out. Mind you, for you it won’t be too…”

The Doctor cocked his eyebrow at Ohila suddenly blushing a bit as she cut off the rest of that sentence. “It’s tough to keep spoilers, isn’t it?” he said, kindly. “For what it’s worth, I’m grateful. Whose idea was it, by the way? Reuniting us in the Matrix? No offence, but I don’t see either of you as being particularly romantic.”

Ohila smiled. “You should have seen me out on the town with Einstein back in the day. We are aware of Clara’s work, and we felt she deserved to have the chance to continue on. This isn’t the first time this has been attempted; it doesn’t always work, and Clara was made aware of this fact. And you should be as well. We won’t be able to tell you how things end. At this point in our timestream, _we_ have no idea if this will work yet. She could still be lost. But Clara said it was worth the gamble. And I guess we’ll find out.”

“There is one other thing, Doctor,” the General said. “Clara gave me this before we sent her back.” She handed the Doctor a folded letter. “I was going to send it to you via hypercube, but you’ve saved me the credits.”

“Thank you, both of you,” the Doctor said. The TARDIS had landed and, with a nod, he turned to leave. “I still haven’t forgiven Gallifrey for what they did to her, or to me. I can’t guarantee you’ll ever see me again.”

“We know,” Ohila said. “Be well.”

With a grim smile, the Doctor nodded and went out the door.

***

The Doctor didn’t read Clara’s letter right away. He needed the right place, so he chose another park. This time, it wasn’t a destitute planet, but rather a small, picturesque patch of green with a bench and a pond just around the corner from where Clara used to live. Occasionally, the two of them would come to this park to unwind and decompress after an adventure. 

It was totally nondescript. Totally peaceful. Totally boring. Perfect.

The Doctor chose the bench he and Clara used to favour. Another restored memory flitted across his mind of the time a police officer woke them up after they’d fallen asleep lying against one another. It had been a long adventure and neither had slept in days. It wasn’t till Clara showed her UNIT ID (the Doctor’s was in his other trousers) that the cop was convinced they weren’t vagrants. The Doctor smiled as he remembered how they’d giggled so much on the way back to the flat, it’s a miracle another officer didn’t arrest them for acting weirdly in public.

The Doctor took a deep breath and opened the letter and began to read Clara’s always-immaculate handwriting:

     _My Doctor_

_By the time you read this, I will have returned to Trap Street and, if Ohila and the General are telling me the truth, some part of me will be with you in the Matrix. I have no idea how this is going to work, though part of me hopes it involves the two of us dressed in matching black leather and shades. But please don’t worry. The chance to be with you, forever … I’m willing to take the risk. What have I got to lose, right?_

_For a long time I waited for you to return, but you never did. I have to admit that I hated you for a long time. Immortality is about everyone else dying around you, you once told me. And of course you were right. It took me a while, but I eventually became friends with my TARDIS, and when he died I was heartbroken—apparently his link to the Eye of Harmony wasn’t as strong as it should be and one day I found the diner and everything condensed down into that siege mode cube. He’d just expired and I had no Boneless to trick into zapping him back to normal again. Even Ashildr eventually died—one of my scientists figured out a cure for the Mire tech. We also tried to figure out a cure for my “condition,” but that was one nut we couldn’t crack. Probably good we didn’t. But the hope that you’d come back… that hope kept me going. I know you told me you couldn’t see me again. But I was hoping that was just good old Rule #1._

_On her deathbed, Ashildr told me why you couldn’t come back for me. You couldn’t interfere in my destiny. Ohila said about as much, too, something about my destiny being a fixed point in time. Did you know that your lot knew I was here the whole time? But they let me go on my merry way for a thousand years before the time came for me to pay the piper. I hope you forgive them for what they did to you. Rassilon was a bastard, I know, but the rest of them are good people. I hope you give them another chance. I stopped hating you a long time ago, and it reminded me of that old saying, “Hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on someone that you don't like,” remember?_

_I’ve lost count how many years it’s been since we were last together. But know this: nothing has changed. OK, I’ve gone from being a nanny in London to being the leader of the human race. That’s a bit of a change (though the pay grade is about the same!). But what I’m trying to say is I still love you as much today as I did back on The Park, back on Gallifrey, back on Trap Street, back seeing you stop Bonnie’s war with your words, back playing guitar on that rubbish tank, back volunteering to go to hell to try and save Danny. Punching a wall for billions of years for me. Sitting in the Maitlands’ driveway, just looking out for me._

_It was wrong of me to force you to say I love you. It didn’t need saying. I always knew._

_So now it’s over. For now, anyway. I have returned to Trap Street and that damn raven. Time has healed, I assume. There is nothing left for you to do for me but live. Do that for me. Find a cause. Find a new companion. Find a new love. You were 1,200 years old when we first met. You had already got married four times (OK, three; I won’t count Marilyn) before I first set foot in the TARDIS that crazy night. You had a life before me. You had a life when you’d forgotten about me. Now, have a life after me._

_Ohila and the General won’t tell me how long you have left in your current body. However much time, use it well. You asked me once if I thought you were a good man. Yes, yes my love, you are a good man. The universe needs you. Your next companion will need you. If you’re still obsessing over me, then stop. Our time will come again. The Matrix won’t know what hit it._

_Ohila just cleared her throat. Have to get a leg on. She needs time to upload a copy of my mind to her Time Lord thingy—of course it has to look like the neuroblocker. I’m not going to say goodbye, Doctor, because if this works, it really won’t be._

_So not goodbye. See you later. I like the sound of that. I only wish you didn’t have to take the slow path again, but don’t be any hurry to join me either, my Doctor. We will be together again, my clever boy._

_I love you._

_**Clara xxx**_

***

As he folded up the letter, the Doctor, for the first time in a long while, did not suffer from conflicted emotions. He wasn’t sad at all, actually. He was proud. Clara had, to the end, remained Clara. She knew the risks of returning to the raven, but there was every chance that at this very moment (relatively speaking), some part of her had joined with some part of him within the Matrix. That thought gave him comfort.

He opened the TARDIS door and looked out on the sunset of the world Clara Oswald had helped rebuild. A world that had meant so much to him, in ways even he was not always willing to believe. And a world that was destined to be a shining beacon for billions of years to come. As the stars began to appear above, it didn’t take long for him to identify the spot where Gallifrey would, eventually, return to the universe. Where he and Clara would have a final stand together before their separation. And where they were now destined, one day, to reunite.

“See you later, my impossible girl,” he said.

A shrill alarm sounded on the console, startling the Doctor out of his reverie. It was an emergency signal, one to be used in only the most dire of emergencies and only available to Time Lords. He’d last heard it during the Time War.

A message was displayed on the scanner. The Doctor took one look and groaned.

“Oh, Missy, what trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Concordance time:
> 
> The chapter titles are taken from the song "Memories" by Mac Davis and Billy Strange, best known from the version recorded in 1968 by Elvis, who of course makes a bit of a cameo here.
> 
> Among the list of deceased companions I include Lucie Miller from Big Finish audios, Astrid from "Voyage of the Damned", and Sara Kingdom and Katarina from "The Daleks' Master Plan".
> 
> Reinette was also known as Madame de Pompadour, a.k.a. "The Girl in the Fireplace."
> 
> I push a little agenda when listing others the Doctor was in love with. I believe he was in love with Romana and Jo Grant along with the others listed. Other Time Lords and Gallifrey-related characters mentioned include Drax from "The Armageddon Factor", and Amy and Zara from the Big Finish Key2Time and Graceless audio dramas.
> 
> Clara's book of notes and the Doctor's "love letter" reply refer to the book "The Companion's Companion".
> 
> The parts about the Earth becoming temporarily uninhabitable are based upon the backstory of the Fourth Doctor story "The Ark in Space" with Nerva coming from that story, too. The Golden Age of Humankind was devised for this story, and the name Elenson is my creation based on Clara's mum's name, however there are episodes particularly during the revival era in which it is mentioned that humans went through renaissance periods in earth's later history, so I made this one of them.
> 
> Those familiar with my story "Afterlife" will see some connection here, though this is not a prequel because Afterlife follows a different narrative path. I considered revising Afterlife to conform with this story, but I'm going to write another storyline instead as a follow-up this one instead. Eventually.
> 
> Finally, the signal received from Missy at the end leads into the flashback sequence that opens "Extremis", providing the tie to Series 10 (and the 2016 Christmas special which presumably takes place between the flashback and "The Pilot") and the events therein.


End file.
